1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to handling of bales of bulk material such as hay or silage and includes the pick-up and loading of such bales onto to a vehicle mounted platform or deck with subsequent break-up and discharge of the bulk material for animal feeding. Although not restricted to any particular bale size, the invention is especially pertinent to the handling of extremely large bales of the type described which are too heavy to be handled manually and, in particular, large rectangular cross section hay bales. A generally L-shaped platform includes a bale engaging and lifting frame means for engaging one side of a rectangular bale and a conveyor mechanism for engaging an adjacent side for supporting the bale when moved to the loaded position of the platform and subsequent bale discharge.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years the trend in preserving hay bales has been toward increasingly large size bales, far beyond the ability for manual handling. Although large round bales, several feet in diameter, have been developed and equipment has been designed either to simply unroll the layered bale and/or perform a chopping operation for pasture or range feeding, the results have not been entirely satisfactory. More recently, the trend has been toward the formation of large rectangular or square cross section bales for more ease of transport and stacking. Equipment has been developed such as disclosed in my co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/370,359, Vehicle Mounted Large Bale Loading, Transporting And Unloading System, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,328,520 B1, issued Dec. 11, 2001 and Ser. No. 09/721,599, Loading Grapple Table, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,540,464, issued Apr. 1, 2003, for loading, transporting and unloading bales of this type to either form stacks of multiple bales or to transport multiple large bales and to distribute or unload individual bales for pasture, range or bunk feeding. The equipment for accomplishing this task is designed essentially of large capacity and complexity for handling the shear weight and size of the multiple large bales. The need has arisen for single bale pick-up, transport and feeding functions for small farms utilizing smaller sized existing equipment such as tractors, trailers and small trucks.